Something Else
by QuasiOuster
Summary: One-shot. While spending the afternoon in each other's company, Michonne and Rick reflect on their place at the prison and how far they've come.


_**AN: I do not own any part of The Walking Dead franchise nor is any profit expected or intended or acquired. This story takes place in between seasons 3 and 4 so there are spoilers up to and through season 4.**_

_**This is just a little one-shot dabbling that I threw together last week and thought I'd share, especially since so many of my biggest supporters are also in the Richonne camp (thanks for the love). It's not breaking any new ground but it was an interesting piece to work on. I'll be running back to my usual corner after this though, LOL. I hope you enjoy and welcome any feedback. Thanks for reading!**_

* * *

Michonne set the frames and secured the stabilizing posts. He lined up the fencing and hammered in the wood planks. That's how they'd settled things when she had volunteered to help him with this project. It ended up working nicely for them. The afternoon heat made the task tolerable as they went about their digging and nailing.

Rick let her rhythmic work-sounds set the pace for his own progress. It calmed him.

There were really only a few people that he felt completely comfortable around, people that he trusted enough to let his guard down: Hershel, Daryl, Carl, of course, and now Michonne, surprisingly. The two men and his son had seen him at his best and worst and understood more than anyone the responsibilities of being a protector. Michonne did as well and then some. She hadn't known him as long but, from time to time, they shared things with each other that they would ordinarily keep to themselves. They lamented the burden of living with the choices they'd made. On occasion, they acknowledged the depths to which despair can lower a person and the difficulties of crawling their way out of that. Rick had started that ascent by letting go of responsibility and focusing on the well-being of his kids. He wondered sometimes what motivated Michonne.

She'd had Andrea and that must have been a comfort. But, without that, why did she still stay with their group? Clearly, she enjoyed her runs with Daryl where she got to be useful, and she valued the discrete relationships she'd formed with a few of the prison folk. Even though she generally came and went as she pleased, he'd gotten used to her presence; he feared that she would one day decide to remain out on her own. Already, he often worried about her pulling away as she went on longer and longer runs to look for the Governor. It wasn't his call how she moved forward. Not this time. Yet he wanted her to stick around.

Maybe he could work harder to be that something else to remind her of the comforts of a home; be that motivation that would convince her to settle down and encourage Carl to offer his support too.

A pause to her steady movement alerted him to trouble. She stood scowling down at her hand. Wiping at something, she returned to inspecting her fingers as if they'd done her a grievous harm. Was she hurt?

"Problem?" he asked, tentative. He hadn't yet found the right balance of interrogation versus concern when it came to her. He stopped his own labors to walk over to her end of the workspace.

Already attacking the issue, she barely acknowledged his proximity. "Just a splinter." Direct and matter-of-fact as always. She went back to squeezing around the skin.

He reached for her wrist and tried not to flinch as she turned that fierce stare onto him. "Just don't squeeze it. That'll make it worse." His fingers hovered a few inches away as he fought the impulse to take over. Almost no one else would think much of his intervention, probably, but he'd learned the hard way that Michonne didn't take kindly to anyone touching her without permission.

"Are you an expert?" There was a glint in her eye, a teasing challenge that charmed him. It was a side to her that didn't come out too much. He saw it often enough, though, and it always amused him.

He used her distraction to take a look at the injury. The thin reed was embedded deeply into the heel of her hand but there was a good amount of it sticking up beyond the surface. It wouldn't be too hard to extract.

"I wouldn't call myself an expert but I know what not to do if I'm trying to keep from making it worse. But you can run off and ask Hershel for a consult if you like."

She rolled her eyes at his challenge. He only grinned and waited for her approval with an expectant, unwavering gaze. When she offered her palm, he held it in his for further inspection. She still had her usual gloves on, always ready for a fight if her katana was needed. But the leather covering was only threatening to push the splinter farther into her palm or cut it off at the entry point.

"Aren't these supposed to keep this kind of thing from happening?" He tugged at the leather accessory as he rolled it up farther onto her hand. She only shrugged. It surprised him that she was letting him take over. It didn't seem her way to submit to another's help if she could do it herself. Then again, splinter removal was best done with the dexterity of two free hands.

Concentrating for the task, he scrutinized the entry point and tried to assess the correct angle of the wound. Reaching into his pocket with one hand while the other still held hers, he pulled out his utility knife. Michonne looked on with interest but no protest. He briefly relinquished his grasp and fiddled with the knife handle to produce a tiny tool with as much flourish as the occasion called for.

"Here we go. This oughta do the trick." That made the stoic woman at his side chuckle.

"A true Boy Scout, Grimes." She shook her head at the miniature pair of tweezers he'd produced. He took his time using his secret weapon to work out the splinter, wiping away the small bead of blood it expelled upon its exit.

He rolled her glove back down and released the warmth of her hand. "Now you can squeeze it." They were still standing close, certainly violating a bit of personal space on both their parts to complete the task. Only now did he really register the intimacy his little triage created.

"Thanks," she said, a reserved smile lifting the corners of her mouth. It was a relaxed gesture, an emotion he wasn't used to associating with her. He decided that he liked it. She rubbed at the injury for a moment and then brushed it off, grabbing her tools and resuming her work. Rick did the same.

To think, if things had been different, he wouldn't be standing here with her. And many of the reasons for that were because he'd been so out of his mind with grief and rage, so adamant about guarding only who he saw as his own kind as if that would fill the hole left by the turmoil of Lori's last days. That left no room to accept what a gift Michonne could be to the group and his son. To him, too.

As he tried to let go of those memories, he scratched at his newly shorn face. It was irritated from the frigid, harsh shave he'd attempted the day before. He was thinking about just letting it go anyway. It's not like his appearance mattered these days.

What did matter is everything they were building here, the makeshift stables they were working on for their new horse or a pen for the pigs they'd found a while back. Maybe he shouldn't dwell on decisions made or not made in the past. Michonne was here, alive and well; at arms length but still a part of the group. For the time being, she was included in a way that made her comfortable enough to stay.

In a world now defined by loss and death, and his small community doing their part to change that, her presence felt like a victory.

* * *

Two hours later, Michonne and Rick leaned against the new fencing, enjoying the water Carl had dropped off for them. They'd finished most of what they needed for the stables and just in time since the sunlight would fade soon and turn the chilly late-winter air into an uncomfortable gust.

Michonne hadn't said a word since Rick had wandered over to help with her splinter. It still amused her, his convenient preparedness and his need to rescue despite his protestations that he was done with all that. It wasn't a bad thing at all. If she'd thought otherwise, there'd have been no way she would have accepted his nurturing overtures. She got enough of that from Hershel.

Getting a read on the man these days was a challenge. He fought hard to be this other thing he thought would make life better for his kids and the people he claimed to care for in this new world. Some days, he seemed so content to plant and farm and live that domestic life where Hershel mentored him and passed on his wisdom, a legacy he, in turn, delivered to his own son. Other times, she'd catch him looking beyond the fence towards the ever-increasing waves of walkers that frequented their doorstep. She wondered what he thought when he took in the remnants of the chaos beyond the prison fences. He'd eye their fortifications and monitor the watch shifts with an air of feigned casualness, unable to hide the tension underneath if anyone cared to look hard enough. And she prided herself on seeing what was below the surface.

Michonne had a sense of how that chaos continued to rage beyond the comfort of their safe haven. It's why she went out in the first place. She didn't let her thoughts linger much on the whys or hows of such things, only the methods of keeping them from her people.

With the big thaw having come sooner rather than later, she'd spent longer and longer amounts of time roaming the area for signs of the Governor. Daryl had gone with her in the beginning yet, after a while, the needs of their people at the prison outweighed the dwindling chances of catching the man that had taken so much from the both of them. They'd understood each other's choices. That's how it was with them; things were easy when it came to how they got along.

But with Rick? Well, that certainly retained its own brand of complications. They were a lot alike, although she doubted he realized how much. She understood the context to the terrible decisions he'd had to make, especially the ones that had ended up impacting her. Her emotions surrounding that could get raw at times; she'd mostly put it behind her though. And he still clung to the enigma in which she shrouded herself. Almost everyone did. The only difference is the genuine desire she felt from him to decipher the varied aspects to her, even the things she kept guarded. Most folks accepted that she had just this one role in the new world: an efficiently cold, ruthless walker-killer, certainly an asset to have on one's team. There were friendships, of course, and respect given and received freely. But the distance remained a fixture and that's how she liked it. She was the sole gatekeeper for her private world and she chose who got an occasional invitation into her inner sanctum. Carl was a frequent visitor, sometimes Daryl or Hershel and, under very special circumstances, the man standing next to her.

The wind nipped at their cheeks as they stared out across the prison grounds. Everyone was packing it up for the day and they would too, soon. But not yet.

Glancing at Rick, Michonne recalled the last time she'd been out a few days ago. There had been this burning question on her mind and she figured now was as good a time as any to explore it. She was oddly curious about his thoughts on the matter.

"When I was out there, just me and Flame, I got to thinking about stumbling on Glenn and Maggie that first time. I was in bad shape, hurt and running from Merle; angry at Andrea and angry at myself for feeling so betrayed. All I could think about was getting away. Going back to my plan of finding that island and just … being. At least until things got better. What if I hadn't heard about the prison or what if I hadn't noticed the formula? What if I'd kept going? I could have but I didn't."

From his silence, she got the sense that he'd thought about it too. It was hard not to when she came and went as she did. And the potential answers seemed so unthinkable to her now.

Finally, he ducked his head and took another sip from his cup. "Point is, you didn't turn your back on 'em. And now you're stuck with us for the trouble." He grinned over to her before returning his attention to the field beyond. "I guess leaving a baby hanging, waiting for that formula, is different from leaving behind grown folks." He didn't speculate on why that was and she was grateful for it. "And you knew what Merle was capable of, the Governor too. I imagine it's not an easy thing to walk away from that. Andrea made her choice but Glenn and Maggie never got one on the matter."

Michonne nodded. He had a point. If there hadn't been a baby in the equation, she'd like to think she wouldn't have left Glenn and Maggie to the sick devices of the Governor, even if they were strangers at the time.

"I remember thinking that I didn't have a whole bunch of choices. I had lost a lot of blood, I hadn't really eaten or slept in who knew how long. It made no sense to go off on some altruistic, wild goose chase, looking for these new people who may be even worse than where I'd just left."

"Yet we still found you on our doorstep with that formula," he finished for her, his drawl a silken caress to her ears. They both smiled at that, acknowledging what felt like a fated decision at this point.

"I don't know what I was thinking," she teased. "Shot, betrayed, hunted—and I'm taking a field trip to a damn prison. I must have been out of my mind." She closed her eyes for a moment, breathing in the reality of her life now. "Or maybe it was something else?" she echoed. She let her mirth become transparent and accessible, just for a few moments and only to him.

From the corner of her eye, she caught the warmth to his expression, a delight at hearing the callback to that elusive explanation for taking her in—and to the justification for keeping her with them when she proved to be 'one of us' according to Carl. His unfiltered pleasure fueled her own.

"Maybe so," he replied. She looked up into his face and cocked her head as he returned the gesture. Reaching over to touch her cup to his, she toasted him.

"To 'something else', then."

He met her gaze, eyes softening as the sun retreated and cast them into the shade of the late day. "Yeah, 'something else.'" He gently pushed his cup into hers as well and then brought it to his lips for a taste, all while holding her attention.

The minutes passed and Michonne sighed as she finished off her water, balancing the cup on top of the fence. Maybe she'd stay another day or two before heading back out. Rick had mentioned building a pen for the pigs they were keeping down in the tombs for the winter. Perhaps she could lend a hand with that too.

Turns out they made a pretty good team.


End file.
